Six-Year Anniversary of the first Beta Weekend.

[Aneirin Cadwall.9126]

Or perhaps just my first beta weekend. Where does the time go? :anguished:This is from when the login screen

. I miss that the most.The whole thing was pretty epic.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

6 years for me too and the members of my guild from gw1 who played in beta. I still miss the Dragon launcher and wish they’d bring it back. The very first map I played in was the Norn starting area. Hordes of people running around in that tiny area. lol.

[Brother.1504]

Beta weekend veteran also. We were so young and happy back then. Not old and salty like we are now.

[Theros.1390]

<3

However, I feel bad for you when I see your download speed :D

[Zappix.7928]

I really do miss that beta login dragon animation, it was amazing and it does need to make a return.

Why was this scrapped? It was amazing, bring it back and bring back the original Mesmer Greatsword sounds! Thank you.

[Dawdler.8521]

Anet should bring back the Shatterer invasion of plains of ashford event to celebrate this, PvP in PvE zones woopwoop.

We get to fight each other, we get to fight Rytlock, we get to fight Eir... oh wait :/

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

@Brother.1504 said:Beta weekend veteran also. We were so young and happy back then. Not old and salty like we are now.

Plenty of salties back then. I remember getting bounced onto an overflow shard (remember those?) in BWE2 and the complaints from English-speakers about French-speakers speaking, well, French in the shard were ... epic.

[notebene.3190]

I was at the first weekend, missed the second weekend because I was out of town, but got to do the 3rd weekend to finish up. :)

[moonstarmac.4603]

Wow...6 years already. I remember getting an Abyss dye on my first beta character. It would be the last time I saw it as well.

[Ardenwolfe.8590]

Yep. Farming in the norn starting area to figure out which class was best for me. Knew I was going to play human, so I didn't want to ruin anything.

Man . . . six years. . . .

This is definitely my longest-played MMO now. And still having fun. No regrets. ?

[Alga.6498]

That Dragon login screen screamed Guild Wars to me along with that beautiful theme with it!6 years fly away so fast, just like that! I so loved the BETA weekend and I was so excited! It was SOO much fun! :D I remember it so well as if it was only yesterday.... :cry:

[Aneirin Cadwall.9126]

@Theros.1390 said:<3

However, I feel bad for you when I see your download speed :D

Does not reflect my actual download bandwidth...At that time it was 15 Mbps. Now it's 100 Mbps. :tongue:

[Rhyse.8179]

Ah, the good old days. When Men Were Men, Women Were Men, and We Hadn't Yet Realized That Anet Had Jumped The Shark 6 Months Earlier And All The Years Of Promises About The Game Were About To Be Violated.

Good times.

[Dreamy Lu.3865]

Veteran playing since beta too. I still play with my very first created character, who has become in the meantime my main toon.

[Ellegon Mcleod.5931]

Sigh ... and was last time that the EU and NA people could play together. Many a guild got split up.

Was fun getting to play the Sylvari when is finally got released as the 5th race (think that was second weekend) :> Think 2 fun parts was being able to jump and as ranger being able to have pet everywhere :> Also the Boss fight at weekend rocked - especially with how many players went over to support the boss :>

[Rashagar.8349]

Unless I have the weekends mixed up my first character for that weekend was a female charr mesmer. I remember spending about 15 minutes trying to outdamage a skale's regeneration. It wasn't even veteran or anything.

Was that the weekend where there were hundreds of dead players around that starting area flame legion shaman and just a constant stream of players throwing themselves at him and dying?

[Sylvari.2953]

I joined during the 2nd beta weekend. :D My PC was crappy and I got a new one only for GW2. :P I still love this game.

[Danikat.8537]

I had an...interesting...experience with the first beta.

Everything I'd heard about the game emphasized the Dynamic Event system - that if an NPC says centaurs are attacking the town and they need your help they mean NOW and if you ignore it until you're ready everyone will die. Then I finally got to try it, made my first character, got into the map and OMG centaurs are attacking the town and they need my help now! It'd been ages since I'd played a game with W,A,S,D (I mainly played top-down RPGs and GW1 with click to move at the time) so at first I couldn't even move my character. I wasn't sure what equipment I had or what any of the menus did but there was no time for that now! I had to rush off and save people!

That was a hell of a learning curve, trying to figure out the controls, the UI and well, everything, whilst rushing through what I only later realised was not a true dynamic event and actually would repeat ad infinitum so I could do it at my own pace.

But things got much better once I was out of the introduction and into the real game. I still did a lot of stupid things - like creating loads of Runes of Life thinking it was great that you could make such good upgrades so early on. (In GW1 +20 health would have been amazing.) and getting annoyed with my ranger pet getting in the way of everything whenever it died because back then they used to walk back to you and you had to use F to revive them, so you had a walking F command on top of whatever you were trying to do.

But it will probably surprise no one who knows me to hear I spent the vast majority of my time simply wandering around, taking screenshots (most of which I sadly lost in a hard drive disaster) and falling off the scenery. One of my favourite memories, although I think it was from a later beta, was thinking I was just messing around in a random cave in Lion's Arch and accidentally finding and completing the Urmaugh's Secret jumping puzzle. I actually had mixed feelings on that - I loved that there were hidden things like that to find but didn't feel half so clever when I realised the sneaky route I'd worked out to get up the back wall of this cave was actually a path designed by someone at Anet.

Edit: Another highlight was hearing that the Temple of Ages was in Queensdale, setting off to find it and seeing the Shadow Behemoth looming over the trees and a mass of dead players on the map and deciding actually I wasn't that keen on it and I'd rather go and see some new things instead. I kind of wish I'd gone to join in, but seeing this huge boss looming over everything looking terrifying was amazing.

[Bobby.3721]

I don't know what I loved more. The critter event with the white rabbit legendary boss.

The absolutely awsome event where branded crystals dropped in Plains of Ashford and players could get branded. That was the coolest game mode where branded players had to kill non-branded players to turn them, while non-branded players had to not only survive, but destroy the crystals as well. The whole map just turned into a big pvp fight!!

And of course the awsome massive scale hunger royale. I remember being one of the last guys left alive on my side because I found a remote spot where food rations kept respawning lol. Such great events and nostalgic memories.....to think that its been 6 years folks is incredible.

[Danikat.8537]

@Bobby.3721 said:I don't know what I loved more. The critter event with the white rabbit legendary boss.

The absolutely awsome event where branded crystals dropped in Plains of Ashford and players could get branded. That was the coolest game mode where branded players had to kill non-branded players to turn them, while non-branded players had to not only survive, but destroy the crystals as well. The whole map just turned into a big pvp fight!!

And of course the awsome massive scale hunger royale. I remember being one of the last guys left alive on my side because I found a remote spot where food rations kept respawning lol. Such great events and nostalgic memories.....to think that its been 6 years folks is incredible.

I'm still sad that I didn't get to experience any of these because I'm in Europe and they were happening about 3am my time. With work the next day there was no way I could stay up for it, and I'd probably have been so tired and wouldn't have known what was going on anyway, but I still regret missing it. I wish they'd done two at different times. It wouldn't have been quite the same since it wouldn't have been just before the servers were shut off, but better than missing it completely.

But I guess in a way that was the start of Anet's learning curve with limited time events.

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

@Aneirin Cadwall.9126 said:

@Theros.1390 said:<3

However, I feel bad for you when I see your download speed :D

Does not reflect my actual download bandwidth...At that time it was 15 Mbps. Now it's 100 Mbps. :tongue:

Is that all? I have 300 Mbps down 100 Mbps up. :p B) :p I could get 500/400 except I don't think it's worth the extra money.

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

I also remember the stress test after BWE3 (I think) where all the "leap to target" skills were hysterically broken. So my GS guardian was in the bandit caves in western QD, and used Leap of Faith (under its old name, Faithful Strike) on the cave floor to leap to a bandit also on the cave floor, and flew past the bandit and got smooshed for 3900 of her 800 health. That stung a little.

Or when my wife and I were in the QD troll cave and nobody knew about the troll because it was BWE2, and she saw the rune and said, "Hey, what's this?" and picked it up... That did not end well.

[CptAurellian.9537]

Ah, a long, long time ago.Getting into the beta was a pretty epic moment for which I had waited most of the time since I quit WoW in 2009. How far GW2 has gone (mostly improved) since then ...

[Aneirin Cadwall.9126]

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:Is that all? I have 300 Mbps down 100 Mbps up. :p B) :p I could get 500/400 except I don't think it's worth the extra money.

Yup. That's the maximum that our one local cable ISP mafioso (Charter/'Spectrum') is allowing currently. 'Murica!

[Tanner Blackfeather.6509]

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:

@Aneirin Cadwall.9126 said:

@Theros.1390 said:<3

However, I feel bad for you when I see your download speed :D

Does not reflect my actual download bandwidth...At that time it was 15 Mbps. Now it's 100 Mbps. :tongue:

Is that all? I have 300 Mbps down 100 Mbps up. :p B) :p I could get 500/400 except I don't think it's worth the extra money.

I'm sitting perfectly content on 100/100, while my ISP offers up to 1000/1000. For just playing this 100 is just fine :D